For the past few years photographer and blogger Jim M. Goldstein has been collecting and sharing an annual list of online photographers’ “best of the year” posts. (More and more of us make this an annual event around the time of the New Year – I posted my 2010 Favorites list a couple weeks ago.)
Today, after what must have been a very complex organizational task, Jim posted his Best Photos of 2010 list. It now includes the work of over 160 photographers – yes, I’m in the list – and if you take the time to follow his links you’ll find a wide range of photography including some stunning and compelling work. If you have some free time (or your boss isn’t looking… :-), wander on over to his link and enjoy!
I did something similar when coming up with my 2010 Favorites list – I asked readers to give me their feedback on which of my photographs spoke to them, and I used that feedback to edit the list down a bit and then to determine the order in which the photos would be posted. Michael has set a more difficult task for his readers. Out of his large selection of very wonderful photographs – at least a couple of which have “iconic” potential – he wants to end up with a list of his best 10.
Wander on over there and take a look at his wonderful collection of photographs – and good luck trying to limit yourself to only 10! I took a look earlier today, realized it was going to be too difficult to eliminate that many in order to come up with a small list, and decided to come back later. While you are visiting his site, be sure to poke around a bit. There is a lot of other great stuff there. In addition to his photography, I recommend looking at his reviews of readers’ photographs and at his “how to” videos.
While I have your attention, I want to echo one thing that Michael wrote in his post: “… the judge—me—gets a say too, so if one of my favorites gets panned by everyone else I may still include it. But as one of my photographer friends, Clinton Smith, once said, we don’t get to pick our best images—the world does. So your votes will carry a lot of weight.”
Like Michael, I did “get the final say,” but I strongly agree that we are often the least able to judge the potential success of our photographs. Sometimes I know that a photograph will communicate with others, but very often (more often, perhaps?) I am surprised by the positive feedback I get on a photograph that wasn’t necessarily one of my very favorites and by the fact that my favorites are often not the ones that speak to others. I had to swallow hard and remove a couple from my initial “favorites” list when they didn’t get much response – but I am always very interested to see what the reactions are, and I learned a lot by considering your votes and reading your comments. (My own personal favorite among my photographs was not selected as the “readers’ favorite,” but I was relieved to see that it at least did pretty well! :-)
It is a rare and special thing to be able to view large collection of a wonderful photographer’s best work. We visited Charlie Cramer’s show at the Center for Photographic Arts again yesterday while visiting Carmel. If you can get to Carmel to see the show, I don’t think you will be disappointed! The show is in it’s last week, so go now…
Early evening light on a tree-covered rocky peninsula at Upper Young Lake, Yosemite National Park, California.
I’ve visited these lakes almost annually for a number of years, since I first visited one autumn on a long day hike from the Tuolumne Meadows area. Many people visit the lower lake on day hikes, quite a few others backpack to the area and visit all three, and climbers on their way to Mount Conness also pass through the area. My plan was to stay several days so that I could do a lot of photography in the area. The upper lake provides a beautiful sub-alpine scene, surrounded by relatively level meadows with small hills interspersed with rocky rises and groves of trees. Because the area is open to the west there can be stunning evening light here… and that I precisely why I went to the lake on this evening.
I was camped at the lower lake, where I had photographed in the morning. After I finished up my morning photography I spent a good part of the late morning and early afternoon eating a post-shoot late breakfast, more or less hanging out, reading, doing a few camp chores, and finally having a very early dinner at about 3:00 – the plan is to eat the big meal of the day early, go off and do photography as the evening light approaches, and then return to camp after dark and have something to eat before climbing into the sleeping bag.
The route that I prefer to use to get to the upper lake is not really exactly a trail. Anticipating that I’d be returning from the upper lake via this route in near or actual darkness, as I climbed it I made sure to remember a series of landmarks that I could use to find my way back. At various junctures on the route – as I would do on any similar route – I stopped to look backwards and fix in my mind certain obvious route cues that I could follow on the way back: stay above the thicker trees, stay in the middle of the bench, cross the low rise while heading straight toward a certain distant ridge, begin the descent at the two groves of trees next to the lake, and so on. I was so focused on this that when I reached my final landmark at the upper lake I barely looked around – I arrived at the final grove and immediately turned right to walk the short distance to the lakeshore and look for compositions. At about this point I recalled that I also had planned to check out camping possibilities for a future visit, so I looked back up at the grove I had just left.
I saw a tent and two people and tripods – all of which I had completely overlooked at first, so fixated was I on my “route.” I walked back up to say “hi” when I noticed that one of the two photographers looked quite familiar. I approached and said, “You bear a striking resemblance to John Sexton” – which made a lot of sense in that he was John Sexton. (If you don’t know who he is… you should. Follow the link to his web site and perhaps do a bit of searching to find out more.) I have, of course, known of John’s wonderful photography for some time and I had most recently been to a lecture at the opening of a show of his work in Carmel earlier this summer. The other photographer was Anne Larsen.
The wilderness is always full of surprises, but meeting John and Anne in the Yosemite back-country was one of the most pleasant in recent memory. We spoke for a while until the light began to become more interesting, but at various times during the evening we again ran into one another and talked about this and that. The next morning I met them once again as we were heading back to the trail head. (I felt a bit guilty about my “tiny” 15 pound load of photography equipment – they were each carrying close to 30 pounds of film gear!)
The photograph is of a tree-covered rocky rise at the end of a narrow curving peninsula that forms a small lagoon near the outlet of the lake. My initial thought had been to photograph a small tree near the edge of the lake – one that I have photographed in the past – but John correctly pointed out that it would be in shadow at the time of best light, so I decided to focus on this subject instead.
This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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